Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (January 27, 1756 - December 5, 1791) is one of the most significant and influential composers in history, and belongs to the Classical Period of Art music.

Table of contents

1 Life 2 Works, musical style and innovations 2.1 Piano music 2.2 Chamber music 2.3 Instrumental music 2.4 The symphonies 2.4.1 The post-Salzburg symphonies 2.4.2 The final trilogy 2.5 The concertos 2.6 Sacred music 2.7 Operatic music 3 Estimation 4 Notable works 4.8 Symphonies 4.9 Concertos 4.10 Piano sonatas 4.11 Serenades and divertimenti 4.12 Masses and church music 5 Mozart's operas 6 External links and references

Life

A prodigy from a musical family, he began composing at the age of five. His father Leopold Mozart was a well-known violin teacher and composer. He was also a harsh parent who took advantage of Mozart by showcasing him as a wunderkind (wonderchild) in the courts of Europe. His sister, Maria Anna, nicknamed "Nannerl", was a talented pianist, and often accompanied her younger brother on Leopold's tours. Mozart wrote a number of piano pieces, in particular duets and pieces for two pianos, to play with her. Once Mozart became ill, and Leopold expressed more concern over the loss of income than over Mozart himself. The cold weather and constant travel may have contributed to his later illness.

During his young years, Mozart completed several journeys in Europe, beginning with an exhibition in 1762 at the Court of the Prince of Bavaria in Munich, then in the same year at the imperial Court in Vienna. Then a long concert tour (three and a half years) took him - with his father Leopold - to the courts of Munich, Manheim, Paris, London, The Hague, again in Paris and back home via Zurich, Donaueschingen, Munich. They went to Vienna again in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768. After one year spent in Salzburg, three trips to Italy followed (December 1769-March 1771, August-December 1771, October 1772-March 1773). During the first of these trips he met in Bologna G.B. Martini, and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. In September 1777 Mozart began a tour of Europe, accompanied only by his mother, that took them to Munich, Manheim and Paris (where she died). In 1781, he finally settled in Vienna, where, on August 4, 1782, he married Constanze Weber, against his father's wishes.

During his trips, Mozart met a great number of musicians, and knew the works of other great composers (among them J.S. Bach, G.F. Handel, Joseph Haydn). Even non-musicians caught his attention: he was so taken by the sound created by Benjamin Franklin's Glass Harmonica, he composed several pieces of music for it.

As an adult, he became a Freemason and worked fervently and successfully to convert his father before his death, in 1787. His late opera The Magic Flute includes Masonic themes and meanings. He was in the same masonic lodge as Joseph Haydn.

Mozart had a difficult life. Often he received no payment for his work, and what sums he did receive were consumed by an extravagant lifestyle. He and Constanze had 6 children, only 2 of whom survived infancy (neither child, Karl Thomas [1784 - 1858] or Franz Xaver Wolfgang [1791 - 1844], married or had children). Gradually, his health declined, until he finally died of what is presumed to have been mercury poisoning while being treated for syphilis. He did not complete his last work, a requiem.

In popular legend, Mozart died penniless and forgotten, buried in a pauper's grave. In fact, although he was no longer as fashionable in Vienna as he had once been, he continued to receive substantial commissions from more distant parts of Europe, Prague in particular. Many of his begging letters survive, but they are evidence not of poverty but of his ability to always spend more than he earned. He was buried in a mass grave, not due to his family's inability to pay for a proper burial, but under orders of the Emperor to combat an outbreak of the bubonic plague.

Mozart spent his final years in Vienna, where one of the apartments he lived in is still to be visited at Domgasse 5 behind St. Stephen's Cathedral. In this house Mozart composed Le nozze di Figaro in 1786. Mozart lived just a little over half of Beethoven's life span, yet was amazingly prolific musically from early childhood until his death in 1791.

In 1809, Constanze married Danish diplomat Georg Nikolaus von Nissen (1761 - 1826). A Mozart fanatic, he edited vulgar passages out of many of the composer's letters, and wrote a Mozart biography.

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Works, musical style and innovations

Piano music

Chamber music

The smaller corpus of the string quintets (K46-174-515-516-593-614), for two violins, two violas and cello, includes works that in some way are even of higher level than the last quartets. Among them are the Quintet in G min. K516, widely considered to be his greatest one. Its rapturous atmosphere remembers the Symphony in G min. K550, and the first violin and first viola talk to each other in a quiet fashion, suitable for the minor tonality of the work.

Mozart wrote a huge number of other chamber music works, for several ensembles of string, wind and brass instruments. Notable are the string Duos, for two Violins or Violin and Viola, the Quartets with Flute (flute, violin, viola, cello) K285-285a-285b-298, the Quintet with Clarinet K581, a true string quartet with clarinet, that exhibits a sensual and spiritual synthesis among the sounds of the different instruments.

Instrumental music

The symphonies

The Early symphonies (1764-1771) are written mainly in the style of the Italian overture, in three movements (Allegro-Andante-Allegro); only in few cases a Minuetto was included.

See also: Mozart's Symphony No. 1, Mozart's Symphony No. 2

Three cycles of Salzburg Symphonies may then be identified.

• Salzburg Symphonies 1772-73 - The eleven symphonies of this cycle, written before Mozart's third trip to Italy, may be divided into two groups:5 germanic concert-symphonies with minuets (K161a, K161b, K162, K162b, K173dA), each lasting around twenty to twenty-five minutes; 6 Italian ouverture style symphonies, without minuets (K135, K141a, K161a, K162, K162b, K173dA), each lasting around eight or nine minutes. None of these symphonies were printed during Mozart's lifetime.
• Salzburg Symphonies 1773-75- This symphonic cycle can also be divided in two groups, of which the most significant one includes seven germanic concert symphonies with minuet (K183, K185, K200-204), and the second one only one symphony in the Italian style (K121), created from an opera overture. Of these symphonies, also, none were printed during Mozart's lifetime.
• Salzburg Symphonies 1775-1783 - If in the years between 1770 and 1775 Mozart created no fewer than thirty-six symphonies, in the following eight years only nine were composed. This may be due to general disillusionment with the Salzburg establishment as well as to the mediocre level of the instrumental ensembles that Mozart found in that town. This span of time might be reasonably considered a transition towards the years of the last great symphonies.

The Linz Symphony (K425) was written in 1783 during a journey of Mozart to that town. The Prague Symphony (K504) was composed in Vienna in 1786, after a happy time spent in Prague. It is much more difficult to perform and more advanced conceptually than any of Mozart's previous symphonies.

The final trilogy

Mozart's final trilogy of symphonies (K543, K550, K551 (Jupiter)) was completed in about three months in 1788. It is quite likely that he hoped to publish these three works together as a single opus, although actually they remained unpublished until after his death. One or two of them might have been played in public in Leipzig in 1789.

The less known and executed among these three symphonies is the K543 in E flat major, perhaps because the ideas that Mozart chose to explore in this work survive with difficulty to the translation to modern, more powerful, instruments.

The Symphony K550 in G minor is one of the only three symphonies in minor tonality written by Mozart (others are the K16a Odense in A minor, composed when Mozart was about 10 years old but which may be spurious, and the K183 Little G minor, composed in 1773). It is by far the most frequently executed of Mozart's symphonies. Its ensemble includes a particularly delicate wind instrumentation, where clarinets were added in a second revision.

The Symphony K551 Jupiter (the nickname was not Mozart's, it seems to have originated in England, possibly with Johann Peter Salomon) is characterized by prominent use of trumpets and kettledrums in the first movement. The Andante cantabile is profoundly moving, and even in the Minuet one can hear contrapunctal complexities. The four note motif of the Finale had been used by Mozart himself many times; it is followed by a profusion of ideas woven into a sonata form movement, leading to a coda where the five principal ideas of the movement are presented contrapunctally.

The concertos

Among the other works, there are the Concerto for Harp, Flute and Orchestra K299, highly original for the connection between two so different instruments, the Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra K191 (1774) and five Concertos for Violin and Orchestra (K207-211-216-218-219), among which the last one is notable for the beauty of the melodies and the skillful use of the expressive and technical characteristics of the instrument, though probably Mozart never went through all the violin possibilities like others (e.g. Beethoven and Brahms) did after him.

Four Concertos for Horn and Orchestra (K412-417-447-495), were written in different years between 1782 and 1786, characterized by an elegant and humorous dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra.

Finally, two important works belong to the Concerto genre: the Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra K364 (1779), with an extraordinary viola part, of which only one previous example is known by Carl Stamitz (but Mozart probably didn't know of it), and the Sinfonia Concertante for Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Bassoon and Orchestra K279b (Anh.9 and later Anh. C 14.01), a beautiful composition whose authenticity is still questioned (there is no Mozart autograph).

Sacred music

Mozart's sacred music is mainly vocal, though also instrumental examples exist, like the Sonate da Chiesa for 2 violins, double bass and organ, composed between 1767 and 1780.

The sacred compositions corpus includes 19 masses, among them the Weisenhaus Messe in C min. K139, a number of works belonging to the Missa Brevis genre, written mainly in Salzburg (K167-192-194-195-220 (Spatzenmesse)), the Kronungsmesse K317, the Great Mass in C min. K427 (where the Credo is not completed and the Agnus Dei is missing) and Mozart's last, unfinished work, the Requiem in D min. K626, written in 1791, after an interval of eight years during which he did not compose masses at all, and completed by Franz Xavier Süssmayr; after Mozart's death.

Several compositions of different kind belong to Mozart's sacred music production: among them Kyrie, Offertorii, Antiphonae, Mottetti (Exultate, Jubilate K165).

Mozart's sacred music presents a rich stylistic mosaic: gregorian choral elements meet rigorous counterpoint, and even operatic elements can sometimes emerge. Stylistic unity and consistency is present over all the sacred music works.

We include in this genre, for their liturgical character, also the compositions written for the Masonic Lodge, like The Cantata Laut Verkunde unsre Freude K623 and the Maurerische Trauermusik K477.

Operatic music

Then, the first italian operas were composed, upon assignments received in Milan and Salzburg: Mitridate re del Ponto (1770, K87), Ascanio in Alba (1771, K111), Il sogno di Scipione (1772, K126), Lucio Silla (1772, K135). In all of this works, Mozart still shows some awkwardness while moving in the traditional Opera seria frame. Moreover, the librettos are often dramatically weak and improbable. Nevertheless, one can find in these works some unambiguously mozartian distinguishing marks, though weight, substance and formal perfection - typical of the older Mozart - are still lacking.

With La finta giardiniera (1774-75, K196), Mozart comes back to the opera buffa, outranging all previous models of that genre. The libretto is still weak, but characters are not schematic anymore and become real individuals, with music definitely contributing to their definition.

Le nozze di Figaro, the first of the three great operatic works, all belonging to the opera buffa genre (though the Don Giovanni obviously involves tragic elements), that Mozart composed with libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, was preceded by some unfinished fragments (Zaide (1779, K344), L'oca del Cairo (1783, K422)), and by the music drama Il re pastore (1775, K208) and the comedy Der Schauspieldirektor (1786, K486).

Le nozze di Figaro (1786, K492), was taken from the comedy Le marriage de Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchais, a work that was hardly accepted - and performed - in France, due to its denunciation contents against the flaws of the higher dominating classes (Clergy and Aristocracy), opposed to the healthy activism of the Third Estate. In Austria, too, Mozart's opera met the opposition of the imperial court, though it should be said that Da Ponte had purged the most shocking aspects from the original text. Actually, the opera was executed during the Spring of 1786 at the Vienna Burgtheater, with enormous success.

The trilogy of Da Ponte librettos continued with Don Giovanni (1787, K527) and Cosi fan tutte (1789, K588), both dealing - but in highly different ways - with the subject of love between men and women.

In his mature years, Mozart composed two important works belonging to the opera seria genre: Idomeneo re di Creta (1780, K366), and La clemenza di Tito, (1791, K621).

After many years from his debut in the german music drama (Singspiel), Mozart came back to this genre with Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782, K384) and, finally, with Die Zauberflöte (1791, K620). Die Zauberflöte has been criticized for the absurdities of its libretto (by Emanuel Schikaneder), that was probably rehandled sev
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